To Break a Fall
by JanuaryLight
Summary: Drabble series. Unless otherwise indicated, each drabble is stand alone.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Thanks to Notapineapple/recoilandgrace for helping me by proof-reading and such.

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Cal Lightman has two talents in life: seeing lies and burning bridges.

And now, she's the last one standing; she's the last connection between his lonely island of tortured genius and self-loathing and the rest of civilization.

For the most part, she stands tall; but sometimes, she sways precariously over the dark sea that surrounds him and threatens to pull her into its bottomless waters.

But even though she shakes, she has not yet broken. She has not yet burned. Not yet.

But God help him the day that she does. God help him when he reduces her to ashes, severs his final connection with humanity, and leaves himself completely isolated.

He's always been best at burning bridges.


	2. Chapter 2

"I love you." He tells her. Except it completely catches her off-guard and she had no idea what to say and no time to prevent herself from showing everything – just fucking everything – on her face. And he sees it.

"What… what is it?" The great Cal Lightman stutters and he knows that he shouldn't have said anything. He senses that this is going to be some sort of moment, a turning point where something is going to change between them and it's not going to be for the better.

"Cal, I…" she shakes her head, because what can she really say? She doesn't know how tell him that she thinks she _used_ to love him, that she _used_ to be naïve enough to believe that they could have something together; that there could be a happy ending of sorts for them. She doesn't know how to say that she finally – after years and years of witnessing his cynical and destructive tendencies at work and having her feelings largely ignored – suffered through enough to realize that he wouldn't do anything but hurt her. She doesn't know how to tell him anything anymore, so instead she just tells him, "I can't."

And she walks away.

(But she will always look back.)


	3. Chapter 3

She figures that life works something like this: there are two kinds of forces (people) in the world: the ones that give and the ones that take. It's an unfair and maybe a slightly (very) destructive process but for the most part it works. That is, until something comes along and throws off the fragile balance and all of a sudden the giving force has nothing left to give but the taking force – not knowing anything else - still tries to take. Of course, from there they really can't go on anymore but they keep trying – because there is nothing else they can do – and something (someone) is bound to break.

(She figures it will be her.)


	4. Chapter 4

When a person disguised their intentions it was usually because they were trying to cover up something devious. But Cal Lightman was far from usual; he was the only person Gillian knew who felt the need to hide good intentions. Strange as it was, he seemed as though he didn t want people to know that he was a good person at heart so he went to great lengths to convince people that he was bad boy with a devil-may care attitude. She had to give him credit though; he played the part very well; there were times when she even found herself wondering if it were really just an act. But she knew better than that: she was his best friend, she knew that he was just playing off and playing up his natural impulses to put on a mask for people, a mask that made him easy to dislike, and he used that to his advantage.

It was bizarre and seemingly illogical, but that was how he operated and it got the job done. Most of the time that was good enough; they finished the case, dropped the masks and went home. But then there were times where Cal forgot to drop his mask; he acted as though he had to keep up the charade for her too, like she didn t already know who he really was. It was those times that she wondered if maybe he wasn t just pretending, maybe that was the real Cal Lightman and everything else was an act. The fact that she had to ask herself that question in the first place meant that he wasn t being completely honest with her, even after all these years, and that hurt far more than any mask he could wear.


End file.
